Fremont Tribune - Iran is Hot Topic During Fortenberry's Town Hall Meeting

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By Tracy Buffington

There are risks associated with a proposed nuclear agreement with Iran, but there are also risks with not approving one, U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry told Fremont-area residents on Tuesday.

Iran was a hot topic at Tuesday's town hall meeting at Midland University, much like it has been at other meetings the 1st District representative has held during this congressional recess.

"There are fundamentally two risks involved here," he said. "The risk of the agreement and the risk of no agreement because Iran already is on the threshold of nuclear weapons capabilities."

Risks associated with approving the deal, which was negotiated between the United State, Iran and five other countries, is the legitimizing of Iran's threshold nuclear status, the weakening of non-proliferation positions held by much of the international community and the lifting of the arms and ballistic missile technology embargo on Iran.

"Iran is benefitting right now by having put in place the nuclear infrastructure that can produce the fuel necessary to make nuclear bombs without having to have gone all the way to make a nuclear bomb," Fortenberry said. "We've just sort of placed legitimacy on that status. That's unprecedented in international affairs for a country with this type of problematic entanglement."

Allowing Iran to be on that threshold could prompt other Middle Eastern countries to follow suit.

"Suddenly you have in the Middle East, the most volatile place in the world, right on the edge of the nuclear precipices," he added.

There are benefits of approving the agreement, Fortenberry said.

"The potential benefits of an agreement are Iran would no long have enough fuel, which they currently have, to make about eight nuclear bombs," he said. "The second is the breakout time, in other words, they have not made a decision to make nuclear weapon, but they could within a matter of months now. The agreement pushes the amount of time to past a year. … There are more significant verifications put in place than we currently have. They are very minimal now; in fact, they're non-existent. And there is this potential with the next generation of Iranians to develop a stronger set of relations."

And there are risks of not approving the agreement, which Congress will debate when it returns from its summer recess. Among them is the possibility of Iran moving forward with its nuclear weapons program and not having a way to verify its intensions.

"This is one of the most consequential decisions I will make on your behalf," Fortenberry said. "I have very serious concerns with this, but I do owe you, I believe, a deliberative process to look at the facts."

Any agreement with Iran, he said, needs "to stop, verify and reverse Iran's march to a potential nuclear weapon."

"As a matter of first principle, Iran cannot be allowed to gain a nuclear weapon," Fortenberry said. "The destabilizing effects on the entire world and the security threat to the allies in the Middle East -- Israel and other Middle Eastern counties -- would be very grave, as well as our own national security."

While Iran was a subject brought up several times during the town hall meeting, Fortenberry also discussed the state of the federal budget, developing an energy policy and helping connect individuals to government services.

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